Truman fed them fish after fish. When the bucket was empty, Gabriel said, “Okay. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Uh-oh,” said Truman. “Here it comes.”
Gabriel nodded. “It’s time. I’d planned to leave months ago, but then Juan came along.”
“I assume I can’t talk you out of it,” said Truman.
“No—it’s time for me to move on.”
Truman felt his stomach tighten, though he’d known for months that this day would come. “What will you do?”
“I haven’t decided yet. There are a couple of projects I’m interested in, in the wild,” Gabriel said.
“Had enough of the zoo life?”
“I’ve never been the go-to-the-office-every-morning kind of guy. This is the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere.”
Truman regarded this man, whom he’d come to deeply respect, and who had kept them from running up on the shoals of their own inexperience and naïveté time after time. “We’ll miss you. You know you have a place here anytime. What’s your time frame?”
“I’d like to be gone in a couple of weeks. The staff’s ready—they don’t need me anymore. You’ll want to hire one more person, and for what it’s worth, I’d promote Neva to senior killer whale keeper. She’s got all the right skills, and I trust her intuition.”
“And Libertine?”
Gabriel grinned. “She’s great, especially for a kookaboo. Keep her as long as you can.”
“She’d be very proud to know you said that,” said Truman.
He gave Neva the news that night. “I have to admit it makes me nervous,” he said. “I don’t know how we’d have gotten to this point without him.”
“We wouldn’t have,” said Neva. “But we’ll be fine. And if we’re not, we know his phone number.”
IN LATE OCTOBER Ivy made one last trip to Bladenham on her way to Cairo. She took Libertine to the Oat Maiden for lunch. “How’s that kitten—what’s his name again?”
“Winken,” said Libertine. “We bring him in sometimes. We’re just hoping that the health inspector doesn’t make a surprise visit. If he does, our plan is to pop him into the dirty-linen hamper.”
“Does Julio Iglesias torment him?” The dog lived with Libertine full time now, after one last stay with Ivy, during which he peed on her new down sofa and ottoman, turned a small hole in the vinyl kitchen floor into a much bigger hole, and bit the Achilles tendon of a gardener who’d come to take care of Ivy’s yard.
“Oh, no, not at all,” Libertine said. “The two of them are thick as thieves. They sleep together almost every night. Plus naps. We got them a bed big enough for them both to curl up in. Who would have guessed it’d take a cat to gentle him? He’s a different dog now.”
“You’re kidding,” Ivy said flatly.
“He even goes through the cat-tube to the house if I give him a boost onto the counter first. Johnson Johnson’s going to build him some stairs.”
Ivy looked hard at Libertine until she blushed. “What?”
“You like him a lot, don’t you?”
“Winken?”
“Johnson Johnson.”
Libertine pinked up. “He’s a very good man.”
“To say nothing of unusual,” Ivy said, grinning.
Libertine smiled, too. “He is. But then I’m not exactly mainstream.” She stirred her cold coffee for a long beat. “Are you looking forward to this trip?”
“Yes and no. It’s time to get away.”
“And you do have friends there?”
Ivy reached across the table to pat Libertine’s hand. “You worry too much. I’ll be fine. Egypt is like a second home to me; I’m not going into exile. Is that what you’re worrying about?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t.”
Libertine nodded and then said softly, “Do you think we’ll ever see Gabriel again?”
“I have to say, you’re in a peculiar state of mind.”
“I don’t do well with change,” Libertine admitted. “Or loss.”
“Who are you losing?”
Libertine pointed across the table at Ivy. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “So much.”
“Find me in your head.”
Libertine smiled tearily. “I think we’ll have to rely on Skype.”
Ivy patted her hand. “Then we’ll Skype. Maybe you can come over sometime.”
“Maybe.” They both knew she wouldn’t. Libertine’s life and work were here in Bladenham now, and tickets overseas were expensive.
And then it was time to go.
They parted at Ivy’s car with one last, hard hug. Just as she pulled away from the curb, Ivy opened the passenger side window and called, “Hey!”
Libertine turned back.
“We did fall in love, you know. In case you missed it.”
And then she was gone.
AS LIBERTINE WENT back inside the Oat Maiden, she fervently wished for Ivy a life as rich and filled with purpose as her own had become. She couldn’t imagine going back to her old life before Friday. In the past few months she’d begun diving regularly to help keep Friday’s pool clean. She’d gotten a raise. Neva was teaching her signals and how to run Friday’s workout sessions—she was inordinately proud that she had her own whistle now, which she used to signal Friday or Juan that they’d followed an instruction correctly. She worked alongside Johnson Johnson at the café in the evenings as well as on her days off, and often stayed in his house overnight. Now she paused in the café’s kitchen doorway for a moment, taking in Winken curled up beneath the pizza oven where the bricks were warm; taking in Johnson Johnson, whose back was to the door, spooning freshly made cookie dough onto industrial-sized cookie sheets. And standing there, surrounded by aromas, flavors, and things she loved, she contemplated the meaning of blessings—the gifts that come to us when we have given up expecting them; the elasticity and courage of the soul. Friday had not found her because he needed her. He had found her because she needed him.
And somehow, though she hadn’t made a sound, Johnson Johnson must have sensed that she was there because he came to her, cupping his warm hands over her ears until the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own heart.
P.S.
About the author
Meet Diane Hammond
About the book
A Killer Whale Love Story
Reading Group Guide
Read on
Excerpt from Hannah’s Dream
More from Diane Hammond
About the author
Meet Diane Hammond
DIANE HAMMOND is the author of four published novels: Hannah’s Dream, Seeing Stars, Going to Bend, and Homesick Creek, all set primarily in the Pacific Northwest. A recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission literary grant, she made Oregon her home from 1984 to 2011, except for brief stints in Tacoma, Washington, and Los Angeles. She worked in public relations for twenty-five years, most recently acting as media liaison and spokesperson for Keiko, the killer whale star of the hit movie Free Willy. Then, after owning her own website design company for a dozen years, she shut down her business in spring 2011 and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she and her husband share their home with three Pembroke Welsh corgis and a cat.
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About the book
A Killer Whale Love Story
IF YOUR WERE ALIVE between 1996 and 1998, and especially if you spent any of those years in the Pacific Northwest, you may remember Keiko, the wild-caught killer whale star of the hit movie Free Willy. In failing health after eighteen years in a small, hot pool at an amusement park in Mexico City, Keiko was transported to a facility built exclusively for him at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. From the minute he arrived to the moment he left two years later, the international press reported almost daily on some achievement, antic, or controversy coming out of the project to rehabilitate and then release him back to the w
ild. He was a media sensation.
As the killer whale’s full-time press secretary, I witnessed his amazing recovery at the hands of a small group of men and women who spent hours each day swimming with him in a pool so cold that hypothermia was always a danger. Day in and day out, in all kinds of weather—most of it bad—these dedicated people kept him company for up to eighteen hours a day, inventing regimens, games, and toys to challenge his mind and body. By the time he left Oregon for Iceland, Keiko was a masterpiece of buff muscle and fierce vitality. He departed as he had arrived, in a cloud of controversy over the morality of keeping whales and dolphins in captivity.
As it turned out, Keiko would be my only killer whale, or at least my only real one—I took down my PR shingle for good a few months after his departure. Exhausted from the intensity of the previous two years, I tried to sort out the experience by doing what I always do—I wrote about it, creating scores of vignettes loosely based on the project’s defining moments, and especially on Keiko as I’d come to know him—sly, silly, charismatic, winsome, affectionate, and, most of all, resilient.
Fast-forward to summer 2010, after the release of my fourth book, Seeing Stars, a novel about child actors in Hollywood. My editor and agent proposed that I next write a sequel to my third and most successful novel, Hannah’s Dream. Always one for a challenge, I cast around for a meaningful story that would take me back to Bladenham, Washington, its tiny Max L. Biedelman Zoo, and the characters I and my readers had come to love.
After lots of false starts I decided to retool those rough vignettes I’d written so long ago, giving the fictional Max L. Biedelman Zoo and killer whale Friday some of Keiko’s real-world qualities and dilemmas. I also decided to enlarge the circle of characters I’d introduced in Hannah’s Dream with brand-new characters who would do much of this book’s heavy lifting: Ivy Levy, Truman Levy’s aunt and eccentric heiress; Julio Iglesias, Ivy’s passive-aggressive Chihuahua; Libertine Adagio, a gentle little animal psychic; and Gabriel Jump, maverick and marine mammal rehabber.
As I once again started from scratch, I finally felt I was headed in the right direction—in fact, I was surprised at the ease with which I was able to move between the fictional and the actual. In my fictional world, as in the actual one, the morality of keeping whales and dolphins captive was polarizing; in my fictional world, as in the actual one, both sides believed absolutely in the rightness of their convictions and in the actions by which they expressed them. In the fictional world, as in the actual one, supremely dedicated people worked tirelessly to enrich the life of an animal unable to do so on his own behalf.
As with Hannah’s Dream, it is my hope that readers will recognize that Friday’s Harbor is, at its core, a love story.
Reading Group Guide
1. As the story goes, nobody in Bogotá knows or remembers how Friday got his name—Viernes. According to the oft-quoted nursery rhyme, “Friday’s child is loving and giving.” What does Friday end up giving to the other characters in the novel?
2. Can Libertine really exchange thoughts with animals? It’s been said that animals can sense storms and other natural disasters before they happen, and can even tell when we humans are sick. Do you think humans and animals can communicate? On what level?
3. What do you think is the difference between the sixth sense Gabriel has for animals, the psychic bond that Libertine shares with animals, and the deep friendship that Sam develops with animals? With whom do you relate most closely?
4. Neva says it best: Gabriel is an enigma. To some he may even seem to be a contradiction. He has such a deep, abiding love for marine mammals, and yet he has captured more than forty whales, including calves. How do you think he reconciles his love of animals with his aiding in their captivity?
5. When Neva asks Libertine if she ever wishes she couldn’t sense animals, Libertine replies, “All the time.” Why do you think this is? What would cause her to want to give up her gift?
6. Libertine and Ivy could not be more different in their temperaments, backgrounds, and beliefs. And yet they form a very important friendship. How is it that they can find common ground?
7. Friday has a happy life in Bladenham—much better than it was before—but he is alone in the sense that there are no other killer whales around him. How does the theme of loneliness pervade the other characters’ personal narratives?
8. Neva is known as the easygoing free spirit, and Truman is the sensible (sometimes uptight) one in their relationship. In what ways do you think having Friday around—and eventually swimming with him—has been good for Truman? Taking Friday in was a big risk. Was it the right choice?
9. One of the VIPs who visit Friday is an aging musician who is well past his prime. Could this be a metaphor? Why is this moment so emotional for all of those who bear witness?
10. Juan’s rescue was a total surprise that brought many unexpected lessons. What did each of the characters learn from Juan’s plight and eventual adoption?
Read on
Excerpt from Hannah’s Dream
In the fall of 1995, the elephant barn was a shabby place despite a fresh interior coat of yellow paint. A lack of insulation made the damp a perpetual intruder, and the high, uninsulated ceiling and soaring hay loft gave the place a hollow feel. It was also outfitted with a small kitchen; a tiny office; an open space furnished like a living room with a couple of inexpensive armchairs, end tables, stacked TV trays, and a big-screen television; and Hannah’s confinement area at the back. “Hey, baby girl,” Sam said softly when he reached the back of the barn. “How’s my sugar?”
Hannah lifted her trunk and rumbled a greeting, the same greeting she’d given him almost every day for the last forty-one years.
“How was your night? You hear that thunderstorm come through? God almighty, Mama nearly jumped out of bed it scared her so bad. Big woman like her scared of thunder, that’s a sorry thing. Here, look what Papa brought you.”
Sam took the donuts from the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and lined them up lovingly on the sill of the one tiny window in Hannah’s barn. Hannah investigated each one, inhaling delicately, exhaling small puffs of powdered sugar. “Go ahead, sugar. They’re those custards you like. Plus a strawberry jelly. I swear, it was all I could do to keep my fingers out of that bag. I’d have done it, too, if I didn’t think Mama would catch me.” Sam chuckled. “But she always does catch me, I don’t know how. When the Lord made that woman he must have given her supernatural powers.”
While Hannah ate her donuts, Sam eased down beside her left front foot and unhooked the heavy chain from its shackle. The anklet had worn away the skin underneath and sometimes there were open sores. Not today.
“Let Papa have a look at that foot, sugar.” Hannah lifted her foot. Max Biedelman had told him an elephant’s toenails should be smooth and the cuticle soft and close-fitting, but two of Hannah’s bulged, foul-smelling from sores underneath; another had a split that Sam had been watching for signs of trouble. His girl had started getting arthritic ten years ago or more, from never having anything soft to stand on, and the more arthritic she got, the more she walked funny, and the funnier she walked, the more unevenly she wore down her foot pads, which put uneven pressure on her toenails, which busted. Sam spent so much time caring for Hannah’s feet that he told Corinna sometimes he might hire himself out as a pedicurist at the Beauty Spot, Corinna’s beauty salon.
Now he dug in his pocket and pulled out a small plastic jar of salve. “Let’s try this, sugar. Mama made this one up specially for you last night.” Sam had a bad foot, too, with a diabetic ulcer the size of a chicken wing along one side of his heel, so Corinna was always whipping up some new healing concoction in the kitchen. If it yielded any improvement, no matter how slight, Sam would bring it in the next day and slather some on Hannah’s poor feet. Nothing ever really worked, but it made him and Corinna feel better, having something to try. Sam fished out a tongue depressor from a box he’d bought with his own money from a medical supply sto
re in Tacoma, and used it like a paddle to apply the ointment. Hannah flinched but stayed put, like she always did. It nearly broke his heart. He patted her on the shoulder.
“Okay, shug, that’s done—you can put your foot down. You ready to go outside on this fine sunny day?” It was early September, when Bladenham smelled of apple orchards and harvested fields. “You bringing your tire with you?” Hannah picked up an old, bald car tire she liked to keep nearby, especially when she was alone. Corinna said it was no different than those shreds of baby blankets that some kids kept with them for comfort, and Sam guessed she was right. He watched Hannah amble outside, blinking in the sudden sunshine after the barn’s dim interior, before he climbed up into the hayloft. He loved the smell of clean fresh hay in the fall, always had. It reminded him of Yakima when growing season was over and new crops were still a season away. Quiet time; healing time. Every year his father’s hands had bled from early spring clear through November—working hands like Sam’s now, only his didn’t ever heal, especially now, what with the diabetes. He knew what his daddy would say about that. Sick or well, you take care of what you got to take care of. Ain’t no such thing as a day off when it comes to living things. He’d meant crops, not elephants, but it was just the same. Eustace Brown had worked right up until the day he’d dropped; died in his bib overalls, the way he’d have liked it.
Sam pitchforked some fresh hay down into the yard. Hannah shambled over, propping her tire against the barn wall in the exact same spot she always did, and began to eat. He loved to watch the way she pinched up a switch of hay with her trunk, tucked it inside her mouth, and chewed as slow and deliberate as if her thoughts were a million miles away. In Burma maybe, in those teak forests Max Biedelman had used to tell him about; the place where shug was born.
More from Diane Hammond
HANNAH’S DREAM
For forty-one years, Samson Brown has been caring for Hannah, the lone elephant at the down-at-the-heels Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Having vowed not to retire until an equally loving and devoted caretaker is found to replace him, Sam rejoices when he meets the smart, compassionate Neva Wilson—the new elephant keeper. But the two soon realize that Hannah’s health is deteriorating and she is lonely, and they must band together to do whatever they can to save their beloved baby girl.
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